Post Empire Strikes Back Campaigning...




Undisclosed Location




The reversion into normal space took place a distance from the planet and as the warship closed, it began to actively scan the planet. The collection of radioactive analysis data from both large and small arms orbital bombardment informed the warship that the planet had indeed been cleared of any intelligent life.

The civilization that had resided upon the planet had been wiped away.

The damages done to the planet were so visible that the Captain only stayed for half an hour before leaving the system.


*


K-200

Captain Vreen looked at the exiting Imperial Star Destroyer and sent a glance his Exec's way. "You owe me, Lieutenant. Never bet against the detail oriented Grand Admiral Hyfe."

The younger officer was speechless at first. The composed himself running the info gathered by the cloaked Shroud. "The ship registry showed it to be the Terror, of the Grand Admiral's First Sentinel Division." He looked up. "They didn't stay long."

Vreen shrugged. "The massive evidence of the craters were enough to convince the Terror that the people on this planet were indeed wiped out."

"If the Grand Admiral finds out, the General..." the Lieutenant started.

"The General knows what he's doing." Vreen interupted. He turned. "You weren't on Sotel were you?"

The Lieutenant turned red being reminded of his junior status among the 256th. Most of the time, the distinction did not come up but anything questioning the beloved leader of the 256th made the veterans a bit jumpy.
He hoped he would one day measure up.

"No sir. I just ... I just wouldn't want the General to come under fire from the Military Command."

The Captain seemed mollified at the comment. "Don't worry, Lieutenant. The General usually has a good idea of what he's doing."

The younger officer turned to stare at the veteran. "Uh.. usually, sir?"

The Captain grinned, "Well, Captain Chandler did tell me of the time they both infiltrated Corellia putting their lives on the line before the Imperial Proper Fleet arrived to 'liberate' it."

"Liberate it sir?"

Vreen grinned. "From the greedy Merchant Princes, Lieutenant."

"Yes sir," The Exec turned to his screens. "It looks like the cloaking generators worked."

"A few engineers will get commendations." Vreen stated as the viewscreen showed a cloaked area of the planet devoid of orbital bombardment scars suddenly shifted into view. "Send a signal to the Pack". The ships of Shroud Command who's cloaking generator had been stripped were holding out of the system to avoid detection. "Give the 'All Clear'. They will need to pick up their generators and their orders are to proceed to Muunillist to be refitted with them again. Dry Dock Dispatch Control is to give them priority."

The Exec nodded and began to carry out the order.


Captain Vreen knew the people of the planet were being shown the arrival of the Terror and what it represented. He wondered just what the General had in mind for the people he had just saved from Hyfe's extermination order.

The Recent Past...

Utropollus Major

The startlingly bleak options which faced Sullivan Bridgewater were not really options at all. On all levels, Sullivan’s existence had become a farce, a mockery – a marionette show designed to satirize whatever fairness may have existed somewhere in the universe. Marching up a hill, he wondered why he did not simply stop; relax his leg muscles, and allow gravity to do its fiendish work.<O:p</O:p

There were twenty two of them; seventeen men, four women and one child – a boy – who had once called that bleak hell of a planet their home. All carried weapons, though Sullivan was certain that some had little idea how to use them. As they reached the summit of the hill, the full reality of this was once again reinforced in each of their minds, as if there was any need. Stretching out before them for what seemed like forever was an endless wasteland of barren urban destruction; the crumbled concrete of buildings, the shattered durasteel of speeders, and torn asunder. Occasionally punctuating the endless gray was the unmistakable orange glow of fire or the red of blood spilled. There was truly nothing left of Utropollus Major.

Sullivan chortled. Yes, there was truly no need for this reminder. After all, the hill they climbed was composed not of the clay and mud of earthly knolls but of the same gray nothingness that comprised everything visible; concrete, steel, machinery and blood. The gray nothingness that now was their home. Once there had been so much made of this simple monochromatic slag; houses, factories, industry and retail. Jobs and homes and places where they slept, ate, loved and died. Churches where they had once worshipped a god that had given them hope and purpose in life.

Religion – Mercism – had once been an important part of their reality, an accepted truth that few had questioned. Now it meant nothing to any of them. It had been reduced to the same smoldering gray sameness as their world. Funny, Sullivan thought, how a god could be made from this, the same material used to build the everyday infrastructure of an urban planet. Yes, a great many things were now funny. The bastard god they had once called their own was hilarious, in fact. A comical construction of men that meant so little Sullivan barely remembered what faith in him felt like. If their god had ever existed, he had certainly abandoned them now.

A woman coughed and stumbled behind Sullivan as they descended the other side of the hill, towards the urban abyss below. He turned and grabbed her arm, keeping her from falling; though he wondered if perhaps the greater mercy might have been to simply let her fall, collapse, and die of the exhaustion surely threatening to overtake her as it was all of them. She nodded her thanks and he muttered something to her. Even he didn’t pay attention to the words. They meant nothing. Ultimately they would be dead in a few days.

Their commander, seeing the stumbling woman, stopped and waited for Sullivan to catch up to him. “They’re tired,” he commented.

“We’ve barely eaten for three days. Our supplies are almost gone. What did you expect?”

“Nothing less,” the commander admitted. He was a balding man of only about thirty years old. Sullivan only knew his first name; Isaac. As they walked, Sullivan watched the man’s eyes search the distance, prying through the epic killing fields of their ruined world for some distinguishing feature. “There,” he said, finally.

“What?” Sullivan asked. They had nearly reached the bottom of the hill; ahead of them, the troupe of twenty two marched down the empty, dust-ridden street, framed on all sides by the husks of what they could only assume had been sky scrapers.

Isaac pointed. “Some of them. There.”

Indeed, following Isaac’s finger into the pale distance, Sullivan could make out a few of the wretched things, silhouettes against a rapidly growing fire. Rising from the flames was thick, red smoke. “What are they doing?”

“They’re burning bodies. Hundreds of them.”

Sullivan looked away. “Why? Don’t they need us – need the bodies?”

“Yes.”

“Then why?”

Isaac sighed. “I don’t know.”

They reached the foot of the hill, still at the rear of their group. One of the men – a soldier with a slight build that barely stood up to Sullivan’s collarbone – dropped back to talk to them. “We should set up camp for the night. These people are exhausted.”

Isaac looked at them appraisingly. “They look like they’re still on their feet to me.”

“Not for long,” the soldier replied.

“Well then,” Isaac retorted, “we will just wait until that happens.”

“You can’t run these people like animals,” the soldier said. “Where we’re going will still be there ten hours from now.”

Isaac grabbed the man by the collar, dragging his small frame up closer to his face. “No, soldier, that is just it. In ten hours, it might not be there. We don’t have the fucking time to make people comfortable. So I’m asking you to put one fucking foot in front of the other until I say so. Do you understand me?”

Sullivan reached out, gently separating the two of them. The others had now stopped, watching the scene with curiosity muted by their exhaustion. “Isaac,” he said quietly, stepping between them. “Look around you. This city is crawling with them. Everywhere is crawling with them. In ten hours, we might not be here.”

“All the more reason to press forward. Our mission – ”

“Our mission!” Sullivan scoffed. “We’re not going to make it tonight, and about an hour and a half the sun will go down. Look at this planet. What do you think we’re going to accomplish? We are going to die here, Isaac.”

The commander looked away.

“These people are not soldiers. Their last days on this planet shouldn’t be lived like pack animals, stumbling about and starving to death. Give them some rest.”

“Fine,” Isaac said, fixing Sullivan with a bitter stare and stepping around him. “We’re setting up camp. Pitch the tents. Search these buildings for something to start a fire with.”

The Recent Past...

Utropollus Major

[font=Verdana]As predicted, the sun had set an hour and a half later, casting them into a looming darkness illuminated only by their fire. Tents had been pitched down one of the alleyways between two ruined buildings. It was a scene from any given campsite in the wilderness, superimposed on a bleak, ruined cityscape. Many of the twenty-two sat around the fire, staring into in with blank expressions. Almost no one spoke.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]A few meters away, the Isaac and Sullivan spoke in hushed tones, as though the words they uttered were not common knowledge anyway. “Joshua, Orson and Marcus have the first patrol of the evening.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“How much ammunition do they have?” Sullivan asked.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Not enough.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Sullivan nodded grimly. “If they come for us?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We’ll use the buildings as cover. Try to fend them off with ion charges, and hope they don’t send any swarms.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Yeah.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]The two slowly made their way to the fire. Sullivan didn’t look at the grim faces he knew surrounded him. He just stared into the fire. He didn’t feel angry or depressed; he didn’t feel anything at all. Just numbness. And he did his best to pretend that he didn’t exist, until a voice broke the silence.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“What are we running from?” It was the boy.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Sullivan looked up. The other adults eyed one another, unsure how to answer, until finally Sullivan decided to bite the bullet. “We’re not running from anything. We’re going somewhere.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“It doesn’t seem that way,” the boy said. He was about five or six. “It seems like we’re running. Everyone’s always looking around, like – like we’ve done something wrong, or gotten away with something, and they’re expecting to get punished any time now. So we must be running from something. What’s chasing us?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Sullivan blinked. How could he explain this to a child? To a child, the universe has structure and order and meaning. How could he explain something so terrible and senseless?<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Is it those machines? Those bug-things?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Yes, they are chasing us.” Sullivan assented. <o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“And is that where all the people went? They all got taken away by the machine-bugs?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Sullivan’s vision blurred, and he looked away. From one of the tents, the voice of the boy’s mother came. “Andrew!” She said. “It’s bedtime. Stop bothering those people.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Andrew sighed, stood, and walked around the fire to where Sullivan sat. “Don’t worry about the machine-bugs,” the boy said. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Thanks,” Sullivan said.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Bye.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]The adults were once again silent as the boy walked away. “A kid that young,” Isaac said. “Seeing all of this… he doesn’t even understand what’s happening.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Fuck, what a thing,” said the soldier who had asked to make camp. “Maybe it’s a good thing he’s too young to understand. If he were a few years older, he might get it. Then what would we tell him? What would anyone tell him?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Maybe it’s better that he isn’t going to grow up after all of this,” Sullivan muttered grimly.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I hate to say it, but you’re probably right. I didn’t catch your name.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Sullivan.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I’m Banks.” The slim man said. “You know, it occurs to me that I don’t know anyone’s last name, here. Mine’s Varrithane; I used to live on Isellington in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place w:st="on">West Isia</st1:place> district –”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“It doesn’t matter what your last name is, and it sure as hell doesn’t matter where you lived,” interjected a burly, graying soldier. “That street doesn’t exist anymore, and neither does that district. There’s no one else left on this planet with the name Banks, either, so you won’t have to worry about us getting you mixed up with anyone else. And for that matter, the Varrithane family doesn’t exist anymore. In fact, in what’s probably a matter of hours, neither will you and neither will any of us. Nobody here cares who you are. Just sit there, and try to get used to the fact that you’re going to die, like the rest of us –”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“That’s enough, Karl,” Isaac said quietly.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Yes, sir.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Banks just stared at his feet. “I’m sorry.” Karl was at least in his mid-fifties and had more experience than any of the either soldiers there; it was only because Isaac’s rank had been higher that he had become the defacto leader. Karl had a way of approaching situations that seemed strange to the rest of them; he was unable to tell a lie or express any sort of fallacy. <o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]For minutes, they sat there in the dark as it grew and receded in the glow of the fire. “Do you two know each other?” Sullivan finally asked.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I’m sorry?” Isaac replied.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“You and Karl.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Why the fuck does that matter?” Karl asked.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Well, I was just thinking,” Sullivan said, looking around finally at the other faces around the fire. He spoke in a monotone, death unfelt on his tongue as he muttered words of an almost cataclysmically tragic nature. “The way you talk, it seems like you know one another. I don’t know anyone else here. Other than the mother and her child, I don’t think anyone else knows anyone, either. We all just happened to join together, one or two at a time, ad hoc. The things – whatever they are – were pretty complete and indiscriminate in their task. Ruthless. Senseless. You know what I mean? Like it was a coin toss as to who lived or died. There was no precaution you could take when they came, no real way to fight them off once they decided they wanted you dead – and it seems like they wanted everyone dead. I watched them kill my entire squad. As far as we know, we’re close to the last group of people left alive on this planet. But you two – you showed up at different times. And I just find the odds astronomical that out of all of the billions of people in the dozens of sectors and districts we comprise, fate would choose to spare two people who know each other in different places, at different times. ”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Karl chortled when Sullivan was finished. “You’re pretty grim, kid. You say all of that shit like it doesn’t even phase you.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“You say it like it makes you laugh.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“It does.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Then amuse us with an answer.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Karl smirked, then assented. “Well, really, our fates are connected. I mean, the reason we’re here is connected. Am I right, Isaac?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Isaac grunted; Karl was clearly thoroughly amused by this, though Isaac was not. Attention shifted back to Karl, and he spoke as he stared into the flames.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I’m not one to tell only part of a story, though.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We have nothing better to do,” Sullivan pointed out. “I won’t sleep tonight.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Fair enough. Well, Isaac and I were both part of an elite military unit, based out of the Clevinger District. It was a prestigious one, the kind some men fight their entire careers to get into. We mostly handled private matters; policing work against gangs, corporate rivalries that ended in bouts between droid armies and the like. I led it up until about a year and a half ago.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“What I mean is, I was demoted. Either way, Isaac here was promoted to the head of the unit, and I was assigned to combat duty while he got the desk job. It wasn’t the same for us as it was for the rest of you. It all started in the Clevinger District – there were no news reports, no early warnings. Not for us. Just a sudden distress call from the other side of the district, and a quick order from the brass – from Isaac – to suit up and get ready.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“When they came, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. Nanites is what the government heavies started calling them on our commlinks. You all saw them. It’s like a swarm of these little mechanical bugs, just buzzing about – that’s how it starts. We were just securing our position in an office building and locking down homes when we saw it start. They came in little groups; out of our windows, we watched them swoop in, sawing through people like it was nothing. They’ll pour in your nose, your ears; they’ll tear your eyes right out and bury into your brain. Whatever they can find. They do their work in – not even seconds.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We saw them tear apart a crowd of people – just eviscerate them. We saw the security forces fire; we shot at them from the windows. It just did nothing. The security guys were ripped to pieces like the rest of them. The clouds smashed storefronts. I saw this one family, they – they tried to hide in their speeder. They sealed the windows and everything. The nanites swirled around it, looking for a way in. Finally, they just descended on the roof of the thing and tore it apart. Consumed it. When they had a hole, they slid inside and did the same to the family. All we could see was blood on the windows.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We had a few vehicles; this was before anyone could mount a real defense against the nanites, so we weren’t in full scale invasion mode. The things would slide right into them, find every crevice and hole and before you know it the thing explodes. We watched down the street as the other soldiers tried to fight them off; the entire place was just consumed in smoke, fire and nanites, like horrible rain cloud descended upon us. But the funny thing was, that with every person on the street below killed, the clouds got bigger, not smaller. And then, what’s worse is that those military speeders and droid tanks we had turned right around and started shooting at us – even mangled and burning as they were.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“One of the tanks blasted the building across the street from us – just leveled it. Lucky it didn’t fall on the one we were in, I guess. Maybe I should be thankful, but I don’t feel it. At this point we’d given up shooting at the swarms. We shut all the windows, knowing it wouldn’t be a defense. We started calling for reinforcements. I ran through the apartment building, shouting at all of the tenants to find blasters. The sound of explosions, screams and fire shook the whole building. I found a broadcast terminal and had one of my men slice the code. ‘The city is under attack,’ I said. ‘Security forces are failing. Any man or woman with a weapon who’s old enough to carry one should defend themselves. If you have a family, lock yourselves in and defend them; if you don’t, come out and assist us.’<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“That’s when the second wave came. Our reinforcements showed up too; I guess the big men at the top got wary to what was happening.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]The other people around the fire nodded. “We had some small idea,” Isaac commented.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Like I said, it was the whole thing. Realizing there was no point in firing down from our window vantage point, my squad emerged in an alley in the streets below just as it started. You all remember what they second wave was like. Those gruesome, bipedal things: dripping blood, half-sewn together, appendages too long or too short, deformed and mutilated, awkwardly wielding weapons, mechanical gadgetry sometimes covering half or more of their bodies. Vehicles like we’d never seen: some of a foreign design, some a hodge-podge of our own weapons and armor. And more of those nanites. Always the nanites. Just a wave of fire and nanites.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“The streets were already filled with smoke. Blood and bodies were scattered everywhere. Our reinforcements came from down the main street, a great wave of our own men. The machine-things climbed up and over the fallen buildings and destroyed speeders. I remember firing my weapon; I remember shouting orders, hastily reorganizing my squad, rushing into the fray as the two forces clashed. But more clearly I remember the realizations we came to during those first moments of close combat.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“First was that the bipedal things were not some other species, but human beings – no, not human beings. Machines made with human parts. Yes, that is what they were and are. They were mechanical constructions with torsos, appendages, heads and eyes attached, used haphazardly where they could serve the most purpose. Some were mostly machine; some were mostly human. Most had parts from more than one person, as best as we could tell. There was a lot of screaming in the first few moments, not all of it cries of pain. The nanite fighting force truly is the most macabre and terrible thing you can imagine. Second was that there was truly very little each of us could do to fight any of these things. The clouds simply disregarded entirely; you cannot shoot insects with a blaster, after all. The minions, drudges, whatever you want to call the bipedal monsters, could scarcely be killed. The nanite technology operates on the basis of – what did you all call it?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Decentralized technology,” Isaac intoned. “In each of the drudges, in each of the vehicles, are thousands or millions of the nanites; they form together and reorganize themselves into useful structures to operate on a larger scale. They don’t just build things; millions of intelligent, individual parts join together to function as a whole. In other words, it’s pointless to just shoot one of them. You’re only damaging the parts you hit; the others take no notice.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“That’s right. So we would shoot one in the chest, and it might blow a hole or it might not. But it would keep coming. Machinery would close over the wound. That’s what really outdid us at the beginning – demoralization. We would blow off both of one of these things’ legs, and it would keep crawling at us. We would blow one in half and both halves would keep coming. I watched an arm, blown off of one of the drudges, fly through the air, grab hold of one of my comrades, and strangle him to death. Even when we damaged one badly enough to leave it lying there, a cloud would fly into it, and a minute later it would get up.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“The third thing we learned was that they could take control of any of us right there and then. Bodies got up off the city streets. Our people were routed; some of them had nanites attack them. I saw a man run about screaming, until finally he turned and shot each of his squad mates. We damaged a few of the vehicles beyond immediate repair, incapacitated a few of the drudges. Enough to slow them down at least. The cost, of course, was the life of almost every single one of us.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I reorganized what was left of my unit – five or six men of the original thirteen – and we retreated back into the alleyway, and back into the building we came. At this point, of course, I hadn’t heard from Isaac or headquarters since we’d been ordered out.” Karl cast a glance at Isaac. “Our comm network was filled with reports of street fighting and panic, so we shut our commlinks off. On the second floor – above the lobby – some men and a few women had gathered, holding blasters. I ordered them into one of the ‘common rooms’ that every corridor had. We overturned furniture for cover and boarded up apartments and the stairwell doors. We forced the elevator door open and wired explosives to the cable.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Finally they started coming. When the elevator started moving, we blew the charge and, I hope, killed whatever few of them we could. When they tore apart the stairwell door, it was like watching preschoolers throw rocks at a barking dog. We fired and fired; my unit tossed grenades. The civilians panicked; some ran away. One ran right into the fray; the nanites tore into his head, and we watched as his skull was stripped bare right in front of us.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We fought hard, but it was futile. The floor was just one long hallway; in what seemed like seconds, they were right on top of us, a few nanites swirling – only a few, luckily for us. It was my idea to start using the stun setting of our rifles; it would fire ionized shots, which would shock some of them, or knock them to the ground. I watched as they tore into the men around me; the drudges wielded our weapons, but at close range they would bite or claw, or strangle. One of them stuck its claws – great metal prongs extending gruesomely from what had once been a human hand – into my second in command’s chest. Whatever happened, I can only assume that the drudges are capable of transferring nanites on contact. The man began vomiting blood so fiercely he coughed up part of his own lung before the nanites finally flowed out of his eyes and ears and he collapsed.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I grabbed two of my men, killing as I went, and we retreated into one of the suites. I locked the door. None of us knew just what to do. We spent at least a minute staring at one another before anyone said anything. One of them – the younger one – had tears in his eyes. The other one just shook, pale with fear. We began to hear scratching at the door, and knew that any minute they would blow the door open, so we moved all the furniture we could get our hands on in front of it.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I noticed then that the older man had stopped moving things. I shouted at him, viciously; I put a gun to his head. Then I noticed his hand moving slowly, strangely. I saw his eyes glaze over, and saw him grow yet paler. It was then that I realized that it wasn’t fear that had changed his pallor; he pulled out a thermal detonator, and activated it. I had only seconds to think; vaguely in my mind it registered that they had broken down the door. I grabbed him and, with all my might, hurled him at it, over the furniture that had failed as a defense and into the drudges coming through the door. I pulled the other man towards the other end of the room, jumping behind a bed. I heard a scream, then felt the sonic blast of an explosion. The heat was overwhelming; everything in that hallway must have been obliterated. The walls melted and crumbled, and I felt myself thrown against the wall, and succumbed to blackness.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Karl paused for a moment. The others hung on his every word. “I can’t believe they didn’t kill you,” Sullivan said.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Me neither. That’s how it happens, though, like you said; dumb luck, chance. The thermal detonator fused the furniture and fallen roofing to the wall. Either they couldn’t move it or they assumed I was dead. I saw that my last surviving squad mate certainly was as I saw when I came to. It took me about a half an hour to move enough rubble to crawl out of the suite and into the hallway. The chaos of the battle had been replaced with a gruesome aftermath that proved much worse. The walls were painted with blood. Yet all other traces of blood and gore had been wiped away. Instead, suspended from the ceiling, bloated and with nanites sometimes visible just beneath the skin, were the bodies of many of the fallen civilians and soldiers.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“That’s why they didn’t just take a space cruiser or steal a nuclear warhead and wipe us out like that. They want to harvest us. They use us as gestation sacs; they consume us and use the energy to reproduce themselves. They salvage our weapons and vehicles and buildings. They use our parts to make fighting machines. There’s a very cold rationale behind all this. <o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I wandered through the floor for what must have been twenty minutes. Finally, I went down the stairs and left the building, into the alley. The street outside was a similar scene. The nanite forces now gone to fight elsewhere, and in their wake left blood and destruction, but no human parts. Whole buildings toppled. Some nanites buzzed about; a few of the smashed vehicles had been converted or were being converted into something – who knows what. But the fighting was somewhere else.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I wandered, aimless. Sometimes I came across piles of bodies. Sometimes there was just nothing but dusk, smoke, fire, and collapsed buildings for kilometers. But then my commlink buzzed; it was Isaac, of course. My unit was being ordered to return to headquarters. Little did they know they were only getting me.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“This brings us to the reason we both survived. I took an abandoned speeder that hadn’t been destroyed. Re-wired it myself. It was a quick drive, only a few minutes. It was in a part of the cityscape that hadn’t been touched yet. Through the windshield I saw fighting far up the street; through the driver’s side window I saw another group of nanites. The place was going to be consumed. I got inside and took an elevator to the top of the building, as I’d been ordered. On the roof they were loading up a small shuttled for an extended flight. The surviving members of the brass were getting on board. About twenty other surviving soldiers were there with me.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“They straggled. I don’t think they understood it – the reality of what was going on. In a few minutes, a rumbling at the base of the building told me that the nanites were here. Still, they straggled. I really don’t understand it; how a group of men who touted themselves as such sophisticated military brass could be so stupid. Finally, the drudges and nanites burst through the roof doors, and the fighting began. And so, they ordered us to defend the pad as they took off. A death sentence, in effect.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We fought as best we could, but it was, for the most part, hopeless. The last of the brass boarded the shuttled and I watched it – what I thought was my last chance at survival – float away. But then, it came back. And just as quickly, it did something none of us expected. It turned every one of its weapons against that building, and fired. Rockets, laser cannons, everything. And I’ll be damned it one of those shots didn’t loose something essential; the building started shaking, and I knew it was coming down.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“So I ran. I ran down, through the burning building, towards the ground. Flew down the stairs like a man half my age and twice my fitness level. Sometime on the way down, the whole fucking thing came down atop my head – something which had the unintended effect of saving my life. The nanites must have figured all of us for dead. I don’t remember anything else; just waking up in the wreckage. I believe that’s when you all found me. But when you did, Isaac was with you. Maybe you should tell that part of the story.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Wait,” Sullivan said. “I don’t understand. Why did you fire on the building?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We were afraid they might pursue us through the air. We weren’t sure,” Isaac said. “Those lives were forfeit anyway.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Karl laughed. “That’s not why.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Isaac eyed Karl slowly. “Careful.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“What are you afraid of? We’re all dead anyway. The reason that he fired on the building – in effect, the reason I survived – is the same reason that I had been demoted. The same reason I had been in the field that day, while Isaac here was sitting comfortably in headquarters.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I never could have survived out there,” Isaac admitted. “For all of my tactical experience, I am really no kind of soldier in comparison to Karl. I would have been torn apart.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“In effect, it saved both of our lives, this single thing.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“What?” Sullivan asked.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Because a year and a half ago, I ordered what has become known as the Riptide Massacre in the upper echelons of the Utropollan military. The complete destruction of the entire <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:PlaceType w:st="on">village</st1:PlaceType> of <st1:PlaceName w:st="on">Riptide</st1:PlaceName></st1:place>; men, women, and children, to stop the spread of a spice dealer who had been operating out of there. This was kept a secret, of course, but there was evidence of it all over that building -- documents, computer systems, holograms. Not that it would have mattered anyway, but that's why they fired on the building -- to cover their tracks. After a tribunal I was found guilty of misconduct, and they demoted me. And, of course, this also resulted in Isaac’s promotion.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Why is that?” Sullivan asked, looking first at Karl then turning his gaze to Isaac.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Because I’m the one who carried it out,” Isaac said, staring into the fire.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“What?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I carried it out. The tribunal found that Karl was responsible for those killings, not me or my squad. We had simply been doing our job. Upper military brass was disgusted by the cold, effective, gruesome nature of this horrible act, and so, of course, someone had to take the fall for it, and that was Karl. They were also very impressed by the cold, effective, gruesome nature of this horrible act, so I was promoted in his place. Karl and I exacted the murder of three-thousand innocent people, and so we were spared from the destruction of the nanites.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]Every face around the fire was twisted into its own look of shock or horror. It simultaneously donned on each mind that Karl and Isaac were not elite soldiers, but ice-hearted paramilitary killers.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“We thought we’d gotten away on the shuttle,” Isaac continued. “But our escape wasn’t as clean as we’d thought. One of the men on board – a general, in fact – had been infected. Like the soldier who’d tried to kill Karl, a few nanites had found their way into him and slowly took over his body. He staggered to the cockpit at the front of the cabin, grabbed the emergency blaster, and with perfect calm, pointed it at the shuttle’s console and fired until it was melted slag. Then he shot both of the pilots, strode into the cabin, and with equal calm shot every person he could, until finally one of the other men took him down.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“The shuttle crashed. As far as I can tell, I was the only survivor.” He scratched his bald head. “That’s where you found me.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]They sat around the fire in silence following this, each staring into the flames. Sullivan shivered. “It’s time for the next patrol,” he said.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]He and the one man and one woman designated to take the next watch stood, moving to their tents to grab their weapons and prepare themselves. Sullivan’s hand shook as he reached into his bag, feeling around in the dark until he heard that tell-tale rattle, the sound of his deliverance. He stood quickly, removing the lid and shaking a few pills into his hand, swallowing them without water, with the ease that only an experienced drug user could.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“What’s that?” A female voice said.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]It was Kara, one of the other two designated for patrol duty. Sullivan eyed her warily. “I have a cold,” he said, sliding the bottle back into his bag.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“No you don’t.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Well, as a matter of fact I do, but you’re right, that’s not why I’m taking these,” Sullivan coolly admitted. “Allow me my vices for the last few hours of my life. Did you want some?”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“I’ll pass. Joshua and Orson sent me to tell you that they’re ready to be relieved. That’s our cue.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]“Yeah.”<o:p></o:p>[/font]

[font=Verdana]The numbness slowly made its way back as they walked to the edge of the camp.<o:p></o:p>[/font]

The Recent Past...

Utropollus Major
It was dark on the edge of the encampment; the night seemed to conspire against the illumination cast by the fire, pushing in on it like a fog. The two of them – Kara and Sullivan – sat silently, their eyes glazed by the darkness, the flashlights on the end of their blasters dusting through the darkness occasionally. Sullivan just stared out, into the endless night, into the silhouette ghost buildings that were dark blankets against the night sky.


The silence was deafening, the darkness blinding, and all manner of other clichés in which Sullivan had little interest. The drugs had long since taken their effect; in fact, they’d done so before they had even reached the edge of the encampment and relieved Joshua and Orson. Considering the dose Sullivan had taken, this was not a surprise.

“You look like you’re afraid,” Sullivan commented. He could see the smooth contours of Kara’s face even through the darkness; he could make out the fear in her delicate features. Sullivan had always been good at reading people. The drugs helped with that too. Detachment. Yes, detachment was the thing; it’s easy to analyze another human being objectively when they mean nothing to you.

Kara eyed him. She seemed to weigh the worth of even replying to Sullivan, his secret now revealed to her. “I am afraid,” she finally admitted.

“What are you afraid of, Kara?” Sullivan said, his voice perfectly even.

Kara looked at him, puzzled. “What am I afraid of? This. Dying. The end of the world.” She paused a moment, examining him. “But you’re not, are you. No, none of this phases you at all, does it?”

“No,” Sullivan admitted. “I’m not afraid. I don’t know what I would be afraid of.”

“Because of the drugs.”

Sullivan sighed. Yes, it was because of the drugs. How could he put it in words that she would understand? He swept across the darkness with the light from his blaster rifle. “I guess so.”

Sullivan’s light swept across her area, coming across a lone figure. It was one of the drudges; its flesh torso comprised of half-exposed bone and bleeding flesh. Some of its limbs were artificial, some were radically altered human limbs from different corpses, attached and held by mechanical means. It walked stiffly, bow-legged; its face was a sunken, decaying nightmare of flesh and metal. By the time Kara saw it, it was already close; she screamed in terror, dropping her weapon.

But Sullivan just stood, and, in total calm, fired his weapon repeatedly at it. A few nanites buzzed around it, hissing as they cut through the air. He acted quickly, emotionless, cutting the monstrosity’s legs out from underneath it. With equal precision he pulled an ion grenade from his belt, setting it without looking and tossing it. It struck the drudge exactly, exploding on impact and sending rays and bolts of electricity that cut the nanites from the air and dropped the drudge to the ground.

Sullivan approached where it lay still, twitching and fighting to get to its feet, the few surviving nanites in its body struggling to reconnect. Kara could not see him through the darkness, but watched the darkness illuminated by ten succinct blaster shots, each one silhouetting Sullivan’s form in a sort of macabre slide show, a strobe-light distraction from a funhouse of some sort.

By the time he returned, there was no sign of movement beyond the encampment. Kara, for what little time she had left in her life, would never forget the look on Sullivan’s face as he sat back down across from her, blood covering parts of his uniform. Not because it was remarkable, for it was not. But because it was completely and utterly unremarkable, devoid of even the slightest response to the horror he had just witnessed.

“The look on your face,” she said, under her breath.

“I’m sorry?”

“The look on your face, just then. It’s like nothing affected you at all. You could have been riding in a speeder or watching a holodrama. What about the things you’ve seen over the past few days? The killing, the brutality, the suffering? None of it even phases you, even gives you pause?”

Sullivan weighed this. “The things I have seen over the past couple of days have been no worse than what I saw in the military. At least this enemy functions with the cold, precise nature of a machine. I’ve seen people do much worse than this to one another. I’ve watched women and children have their arms and legs amputated by rebel commandos; I’ve seen young boys castrated by drug lords; I’ve seen fathers forced to watch their children burned alive. At least these machines just kill you.”

Kara blinked and looked at the ground. “That’s academics,” she said softly. “Drugs or no drugs, doesn’t a part of you – somewhere – respond to any of this?”

Sullivan looked out into the night. An allegory. “I’d like to say that it did. I’d like to tell you that every time I see someone die, a part of me reaches out to them. That when I look into the eyes of a suffering child I can feel his pain. But I can’t.” He paused. “No. None of this even touches me. I don’t feel angry, or depressed, or worried, or afraid. I don’t feel anything at all. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything.”

Kara stared. “What are they?”

“The drugs?”

“Yes.”

“Libextoprophene. LXP for short. They used to use it as part of an anesthetic regimen, awhile back. And in the army. They don’t anymore, but you can still get it fairly easily. I think it’s still legal in a few districts by prescription. It’s a dissociative. That’s what they call it. In high enough doses, you hallucinate. In doses just above what is medically recommended, it disconnects you from reality. It disconnects you from yourself, from other people, from pain and happiness and sadness and joy.”

“How long have you been taking them?” Kara added.

“I’ve been addicted to LXP for fifteen years. But I’ve been on and off drugs, alcohol and medication for my entire life.”

“Don’t you ever wish you could feel something? Anything?”

Sullivan sighed. “No. It’s a pretty easy tradeoff to make, sadness for numbness. I’m a lifelong addict. I have an addictive personality and all the makings of a drug abuser. LXP is just my high of choice right now; I’ve been to rehab for alcohol, spice, drugs of every variety. When I was fifteen, I tried to kill myself. I swallowed everything in my mother’s medicine cabinet. They had my stomach pumped. I still remember waking up in the hospital, with my family around me. They were telling me that everything was okay, that everything was fine, I was alright and they were there and it was great.

“And I can still remember how much I just wanted to scream at all of them that it was not alright. I didn’t want to wake up. I hated them all; I wished that they’d just left me to die. Of the next five years, I spent half of it in rehabilitation centers and clinics. I spent the rest in therapy. I was diagnosed manic depressive a month after my suicide attempt. I became an alcoholic; I did amphetamines; I did spice. I did everything.

“Slowly downward, slowly downward.

“I managed to finish school with decent enough grades. I never had to try in school, that was the thing; I made up for lost time easily. Sometimes I was angry that I felt so angry. I hated myself, I hated life. Everything seemed hopeless; everything was cold to the touch, completely empty of meaning. I spent whole days in my room, staring at the wall, wanting to die. I didn’t know why I felt that way. I had never gone through any terribly scarring experiences; I was never abused as a child. I had a loving family who cared about me and stuck with me the whole way through. I had brains a million other kids didn’t have. But for some reason, god – if he is somewhere up there, laughing down at me – decided that my brain would work this way, that the endorphins or the serotonin wouldn’t flow just the way they were supposed to, that things just wouldn’t work quite right. I never chose to feel sad. I just was.

“I washed out of college after a few months. I got hooked on prescription drugs; painkillers. I found myself in a rehab clinic again a few months later. They told me I needed a direction in life. Once I was clean and feeling a little better, I went and joined the army. It was like a family to me. My depression got better. It comes and goes, I’m told. It lies dormant for a time. Puberty ended, of course, and I guess that changed some of the chemicals in my head for the better. But that wasn’t it. Mostly, it was the army.

“It’s an easy way to live, the army. Physical work, long hours, no time to think. In fact, they encourage you not to think. It’s better that way. You do little tricks for them, and then you’re rewarded; the more willing you are to obey, the better you do. Like a monkey. Unconsciousness. That was the thing I’d always been looking for, and that’s what the army gave me. A drug-free high that didn’t fuck me up, and lasted for months at a time. You just do what you’re told and when you do, they make you feel good about yourself. You fly from place to place, and the waking hours are just time between sleeping.

“A few years in, I was already a commander. People respected me and it felt good, and all I’d had to do was get in better shape and then follow orders. We’d been carrying out these raids, you see, in the middle of the night. They were raids on drug cartel camps. We’d slip in, slaughter twenty or thirty guys before they could pull weapons on us, and then leave.

“The raids had been going on for a month when I noticed that one of the local holopapers, they’d been following this story. Seems that little mining camps of rural settlers kept disappearing. These camps would be established for small companies in rural towns, kept up for a few months, then torn down. But lately, the miners had been turning up dead. And when I looked at the back issues of the paper, I noticed that on the night of almost every raid we’d carried out, there was one of these stories.

“So, you know what I did?” Sullivan asked.

“No,” Kara answered quietly.

“Nothing. I shut the holoterminal off and went on another raid, and then another. I forgot all about it for another month. The raids were wrapping up then; it was almost over. We were inserted as usual, a few miles out. We hiked in, and did what we were told; killed what we were supposed to, and left for the extraction zone.

“It’s funny. Little coincidences you have no control over. Little twists of fate. Who knows how long I could have labored in blissful ignorance? But that night, one of the speeders crashed. Mechanical failure. All of the pilots were killed. So my squad had to hike to a secondary extraction point. This happened to take us by a local village, nestled in a clearing in the forest, in the middle of nowhere. It was one in the morning, but every light was on; the streets were filled with crying women and children. And as my squad walked down the town’s only paved road, the bodies were carried in one by one.

“It was a parade of the dead. Blaster scarred bodies on stretchers, carried by crying medics, through a crowd of crying women and crying children. It didn’t take long before we noticed our handiwork.

“I was numb. I asked one of the women who the people were. She said, ‘Just miners,’ and burst into tears. ‘My husband was one of them.’ We all looked at each other and knew what we had done. I don’t know if they understood the full magnitude, but I did. Government ties to the mining industry were well-documented. The villagers were moving in on their territory. So we killed them.

“On the hike to the extraction point, none of us talked about it. No one ever mentioned what we had seen to anyone else or talked about it again. Everyone just did their best to forget, I guess. But it’s one of those things; once it’s done, it can never be undone. The drug-free high of the army was done, for me; slowly downward, slowly downward. I felt every atrocity I saw more pronouncedly than ever; my depression returned tenfold. I started buying libextoprophene off of one of the other guys, and I was hooked.”

“You never got caught?” Kara asked.

“No, I did. When they found out I was on LXP, no one cared. It’s an open secret in military. Drugs are everywhere. They don’t care because LXP doesn’t seriously impair motor function in moderation, but it does detach you from what you’re doing. You follow orders more closely; you’re never afraid; you kill unquestioningly. You don’t stop to think, and you certainly don’t feel anything for the people you’re fighting. Exactly what they want in a soldier.”

The two sat in silence in the dark for a while, scanning the darkness with their lights. A rustle to their right caught their attention momentarily, but turned out to be nothing. Kara, though, had sat bolt upright at the first indication of any sound. It took a few minutes before the fear had faded from her face. Sullivan both pitied and envied her. “You’re jumpy,” he commented.

“You would be, too.” Her voice was laced with what might have been jealousy. In the back of his mind, Sullivan wondered if she both pitied and envied him, as well.

“You’re afraid?” Sullivan asked. It was an honest question.

Kara looked at him, irritated. “Of course I’m afraid. But it’s more than that. My mind is still reeling. I just watched everything I ever held dear be destroyed. I don’t know whether to grieve or be afraid, or just give up. Even you must understand that.”

Sullivan studied her for a moment within the objectivity of his numbness. “No. I can’t remember a time that this place meant anything to me. Whatever cosmic wheel that decides where you’re born just happened to stop over Utropollus when it was my turn. The fact that it’s gone now just seems to prove to me how hollow I always thought this place was.”

“But… even if we live, what then? What will we do? Where will we go? Where will you go?”

Sullivan laughed darkly. “I honestly don’t think that will happen.”

“And that doesn’t scare you? Death? Doesn’t your life mean anything to you?”

“Hm.” Sullivan stared at the ground for awhile. The movie reel of his life wound through his brain, the downward spiral that had comprised everything he had ever known painting pictures in his mind’s eye. “No.”

“I don’t believe that. You’re still here, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Sullivan shrugged. “What can I say? The path of least resistance. I’ve floated through the past fifteen years in a daze. What is my life? What has it ever been? A set of unfortunate circumstances. A rat in a cage bouncing off the obstacles in his way. If you’re asking me whether I have anything to live for, or whether I can think of tomorrow or the day after, or any of the next thousand days down the line ever being something more than this, I don’t and I can’t. Just a haze of half-formed thoughts, dead brain cells and going slowly downward, slowly downward.”

“So that’s how you’re going to live out the last days of your life? Cold and lifeless – like them?” Kara asked. “Like the machines that hunt us?”

At this, Sullivan finally threw his head back and laughed, his cold, dark, macabre laugh, into the night. “What are you laughing at?” Kara, clearly frustrated asked. “Why is this funny? What the fuck is so funny?” Slowly, Sullivan stopped laughing.

“Come on, haven’t you been listening, Kara? What are human beings but machines? Sometimes we’re broken, and sometimes we’re fixed; sometimes we work and sometimes we don’t. But all we are is a set of math equations. Input and output. I never chose to be depressed, I just was. From there, nothing was a choice. Just input and output, a simple set of actions and reactions. These machines just work on a much simpler set of variables.”

The rustle, to the right again. This time it was more prolonged, and more distant; and now it was followed by a blood-curdling scream. Yet the scream came not from the direction of the commotion, but from behind them, in the encampment. The mother of the young child, Andrew, ran forth, drenched in sweat. “Andrew!” She shouted. “He’s gone! He ran off – I don’t –” With this half-spoken explanation, she set off forward again, towards the commotion to the distant right, beyond the splintered buildings and such catastrophe.

Sullivan caught her as the first shots were fired. They too, came from the direction of the commotion. “Stay here,” he said. “You can’t do any good. Go back to your tent and wait.” He called Isaac and Karl, and Kara had already set off in the direction of the violence by the time they got there. “Slowly downward, slowly downward,” he muttered under his breath. “Hold the post,” Sullivan told them, and they agreed.

As he caught up with Kara, he told her how stupid an idea this was. “All for one kid,” he said, but stuck by her nonetheless. Up and over the broken duracrete they went, the piled remnants of the buildings leading them up into the midst of a shattered archway. Down below the small, artificial hill was a corridor of fallen and standing duracrete walls. Kara rushed down and into it, the din of gunfire continuing. The edges of the camp were only barely visible behind them now, obscured by the hills of rubble.

And just beyond the brief corridor was the confluence of four alleyways, framed by fallen buildings on all side – and illuminated by blaster fire. From down one of the alleys, drudges fired at them. They ducked and took cover behind fallen duracrete, firing back viciously. Sullivan tossed another of the grenades, hoping to down any nearby nanites. And as the grenade burst, its payload of electricity splintering through the night, the light of its combustions shone just brilliantly enough to make visible one little form, standing horrified in the midst of the commotion, in the middle of the confluence of alleyways. It was the boy. “Andrew!” Shouted Kara.

The boy ran away, down the alley to the right. It was then that Sullivan, firing at the ever-encroaching drudges as he was, became conscious of the bursts of light coming from the direction of the camp, just barely visible now. Kara stood, ready to pursue the boy. “Kara,” Sullivan said, grabbing her arm and motioning towards the camp.

She pulled herself from his grasp and ran off towards Andrew. “Slowly downward,” Sullivan whispered, “slowly downward.”

He chased after her. The drugs seemed to pull him deeper when his mind should have been the most alert. It was like a lucid dreamscape as the two rushed down a maze of half-shattered alleyways, weapons blazing at the drudges that would appear around them, catching the occasional glimpse of the boy – always just beyond reach. Their feet were like air; Sullivan’s fire cut through drudge after horrifying drudge, blood splattering across them at close range, limbs flying free of their owners. He swung his rifle at one, with such abandon that it embedded itself partially in his target’s head, comprised of flesh and metal. Firing the weapon set it free, and then he was off again, running like the wind.

It was a funhouse.

The lights of the funhouse were unnatural and multi-colored, all wrong for the setting and clashing with one another.

The drudges were the monsters, little cardboard cutouts that popped up at them. The worst part about monsters is that there’s always something recognizable about them. Something that makes them like you. Human arms, heads, limbs attached to metal monster bodies. Sometimes Sullivan would catch a glimpse of an eye.

The world swam with the fluid dizziness of a funhouse mirror, Kara all distorted, his own thoughts a blur.

Sullivan laughed. It was a real laugh. This was comedy, this was horror, this was the joke of the almighty on them all! To make a world into a funhouse, to lock its inhabitants in and throw away the key, to make some of them into bizarre horrible little monsters and chase the rest about like mice in a maze.

And like all lab rats, Sullivan knew that their ultimate destiny was a quick and easy disposal.

The funhouse came to an end abruptly. It was like a speeder full of thoughts hitting a brick wall, all of them rushing simultaneously forward into an orgy of knowledge overwhelming Sullivan. The suddenness of it all inundated him, and he was made so aware that it became even more like a dizzying fantasy nightmare. The dial of awareness spun the whole way around, landing back on slow-motion daydream.

It all seemed to happen simultaneously; the child rushing into the dead end of the alleyway, the drudge attacking him, the laser lights of their rifles cutting the monster down only too late; the ion grenade ripping the thing at last to shreds. And finally, a boy against all odds still standing, crying there in the madness of the funhouse, seemingly oblivious to the wound he had suffered.

And slowly, as Andrew’s head lifted up, Sullivan saw that he was no longer human. His eyes were sunken and the flesh around them pale; the wound on his chest pulsating like some kind of suppurating tear in the very fabric of his humanity. The coldness of his skin, the bizarre coloring of his pupils, the metallic sheen that seemed to begin to take hold of him.

“They’ve taken control of him,” Sullivan said, with dizzying calm.

“No!” Kara cried. “There’s a chance!”

He raised his rifle. “You know there’s not.”

“Stop! Stop!” She screamed at him.

“Slowly downward, slowly downward,” he whispered. And then he took him apart. The shots singed the boy’s flesh, knocking him to the ground as he shouted feral, incoherent obscenities. Again and again, loosing tendon, flesh and bone; shearing free one arm, then another. The viciousness of the boy’s struggle left no doubt his mind was deceased, and his body no longer his own.

Kara watched, as he fired again and again, finding himself without an ion grenade and so closing in to close range and slamming down his rifle repeatedly on the twitching body of the child, as the nanites that infested it restructured and restructured themselves. Like a lab rat throwing itself against its own cage, again and again the child tried to lash out, and mercilessly Sullivan fired and struck, fired and struck. If he was conscious of what he was doing, he gave no indication of it.

Tears poured down Kara’s face. She fell to the ground, sobbing, screaming into the dirt and ashes on the ground. Some things are too terrible to watch, even for a soldier. She wondered how Sullivan could be so heartless; how he could, even in the haze that his life had become, operate with such ruthless efficacy. She was caught between being horrified and being thankful.

But finally the twitching had nearly stopped, the child’s nanite-infested body dismembered thoroughly, and Sullivan Bridgewater stood, covered from head to toe in blood. Another wail escaped Kara as she looked up at Sullivan, as he grabbed her and pulled her to her feet, his thin frame surprisingly strong. Their eyes met, tears still blurring her vision as she stared at this emotionless thing before her.

For just a second, she thought she saw a glint of sadness in his eyes. She was certain of it, but then it was gone. He steadied himself, and clenched his jaw. “Now do you see?” He asked, and began dragging her from that dead end, back the way they’d come. “Now do you see?”

And she did see. They found their way to the street, where no drudges stood to batter them, but Kara was still crying. She didn’t cry out of sadness. She expected to be sad, but here at the edge of the end – beyond the last days of Utropollus, beyond the apocalypse – she found herself completely at utterly empty. She had nothing more to give. And this emptiness was the darkest emotion of all, the coldest thing she had ever felt. So she cried, because there was nothing else she could do. Because Sullivan was right.

They were nothing but machines.

In slow-motion they jogged, blood-drenched Sullivan still dragging Kara, all of the miles back to the camp. Eventually no more tears would come, and she just let herself be pulled.

The return to the camp heralded a reminder of the fight they had left behind. Sullivan stopped dragging Kara and broke into a run, firing at the few remaining drudges surrounding the camp. Shouts and gunfire lit his way as he acted to flank the monsters, his blasts confusing and cutting them. Kara, numb and broken, dragged herself into the camp itself, offering only a few paltry shots at their enemies.

The fight lasted only a few minutes longer. Grenades and laserfire finally cut down the last of them.

Sullivan approached through the smoldering battlefield. He found the forms of Isaac, Karl and a few others, shadows against the glow of the fire from behind the tents. “Where were you?” Isaac asked. Sullivan didn’t answer at first.

Kara approached them from behind, as Karl shouted at the others to pile and burn the bodies. “I said, where were you?”

“I heard you.” Sullivan looked at Kara, who still seemed dazed. She looked to Isaac, then Sullivan.

“We went after Andrew,” Kara said. “It was my idea.”

“The boy?”

“Yes.” Sullivan answered, this time.

“And?”

Sullivan looked at Kara, and she at him. “He’s dead,” he said simply.

Isaac nodded.

“Someone should tell the mother,” Sullivan suggested, when Isaac said nothing in reply.

“I couldn’t find her,” Kara said.

Isaac spat. “The boy’s mother is dead as well. She was killed in the attack. So were two others.”

Kara buried her head in her hands. Sullivan simply nodded, and went about the task of piling bodies in a great pyre just outside the camp. And that night, they threw gasoline recovered days before onto them, and set them all ablaze, lest any of the mindless nanites reassert their control over the waste material that the corpses comprised, or burrow their way out and attack them.

The orange light of the fire cast a radiance all its own, and chased away the darkness of the night more effectively than the camp fire ever had. The band of survivors – the remaining eighteen – took to sitting around the burning bodies for protection and illumination. No one seemed particularly bothered by this.

“Slowly downward,” Sullivan was seen to mutter as he stared that lifeless stare of his into the flames, “slowly downward.”

The Recent Past...

Utropollus Major

The flames rising from the dead lasted until morning.
When at last the sun came up, shedding light on the blood-spattered ground, Sullivan was already awake. Drugs or no drugs, he had found no sleep in the scrap metal dungeon of the ruined Utropollus. This didn’t bother him. Wordlessly, they packed up camp, pulling down their tents as easily at the nanites had pulled down their world. Each of the eighteen slung their packs about them, and off they went, in the direction of the sun.

The sunlight was drab, a dull grey, its normal brilliance muted by the dust cloud that had ensnared much of Utropollus. They were the walking dead, and only specks of light broke through their coffin to reach their haggard eyes.

Sullivan walked alongside Isaac. As Isaac watched, Sullivan rummaged through his own bag, pulling out a bottle of pills and shaking a few into his hand. He swallowed them, then glanced at Isaac, as he realized the other man was watching him. “Something you wanted to say?”

Isaac shrugged. “Nothing.”

They continued walking in silence. Ahead of them, one of the younger soldiers – a boy of only seventeen or eighteen, whose name Sullivan could not recall – fell to the ground, coughing and hacking violently. Kara and Banks pulled him to his feet, as Isaac and Sullivan caught up to him. “You alright?” Isaac asked.

“Yeah, he’s alright,” Banks said, slapping the younger man on the back. This was obviously not true; it was apparent to everyone that the boy had taken seriously ill. He was ashen faced, eyes sunken and cheeks pale. Starvation, constant hiking and poor conditions had taken their toll on him. Looking around, Sullivan dazedly realized how many of his comrades looked the same.

The boy coughed. “I’ll be alright,” he said.

Slowly, each of them nodded, knowing he would not – but also knowing there was little that any of them could do. There was no medicine, no reason to stop; they were bound on their course, nothing but passengers to their own fate. Karl was the first to voice this to them, joining in step alongside Isaac and Sullivan. He spoke in a hushed voice, though no one was listening anyway. “I think,” he said, “there’s a reality here we have to face. These people are starving, exhausted, and some of them are wounded. They’re slowing us down. The transmitter is still at least a day away, and chances are that most of these people will not live that long.”

The objective. They had been traveling so long and so far, Sullivan had almost forgotten. When they had discovered Isaac’s crashed airspeeder, one of the men had rewired its long-range commlink systems to connect to a system Isaac had told them about; an interconnected network of underground bunkers, intended only for top military officials. In each there was a highly-powered transmitter – one with the power to make extra-planetary contact. Most reported in to the network as absent – destroyed and ruined, captured by the nanite machines. But one of these fallout bunkers, in a district called Orion, still reported in as active. It was here that they marched endlessly.

None of them had seen Banks approach. “You can’t just leave these people here,” he said. All of the heads turned to look at him.

“No one is talking about –” Isaac began, but Karl cut him.

“It’s what I’m talking about,” Karl said, cutting him off. “This mission is important. Our getting off this planet – or at least transmitting something to the rest of the system – is essential if these things are going to be stopped.”

“Stopping them? How do you even know…”

They continued on like that for at least another half a kilometer, down the dusty streets of the broken Utropollus. Sullivan never said a word. He just kept looking forward, putting one foot in front of the other. After awhile, he couldn’t even hear them. It was just white noise, repeating sound that fades out of consciousness. When he realized they were still arguing half a kilometer later, their venomous shouts had become so loud that they drained out all other sound.

And so no one heard the lone drudge, obviously damaged in some sort of battle, limp out from its safe haven between two buildings. Slowly, but surely, as everyone paid attention to the surging egos battling one another, the drudge approached the slowest, sickest member of the group, who at that time just happened to be the boy who had fallen. In seconds, it ripped him apart, its appendages claws, lashing out and tearing with incredible strength. By the time Kara’s scream alerted them to the calamity, the boy was nothing but a broken mess of body parts on the floor.

All of the soldiers began shooting at once, tearing into the thing. It fell only seconds later; Karl and the few others whose blasters had stun settings sent waves of electricity into the thing, until its twitching amalgam of human parts showed no signs of life.

Everyone breathed heavy, staring at one another warily. Everyone waited for the other shoe to drop as Karl, Banks and Isaac stared at one another. As it turned out, the other shoe in this case was Karl. “You see?” He shouted. “You see? If this motherfucker would just stop picking fights and hold his fucking tongue –”

“Are you off your rocker, old man?” Banks retorted. “I think you’re crazy. Absolutely fucking crazy.”

Karl lunged; Isaac and Sullivan held him back. “I’ll tear you fucking apart!” Karl bellowed. “You cowardly little fuck! All you’ve done is bitch and complain like some sort of moralist since you got here! And we’ve all –”

He heaved at the two restraining him.

“—fucking –”

He heaved again.

“—had enough of it!”

With this he broke free of Isaac and Sullivan, dashing towards Banks and snarling. It almost surprised Sullivan, then, when a blaster shot rang out only seconds later, and the limp body of Karl fell to the ground, a gaping, smoking wound in its neck.

Banks dropped his blaster, shaking. “You saw it!” He yelled. “You fucking saw it! He was going to kill me! He was going to do me in!”

Everyone looked at one another tensely. Sullivan, unbothered, was the one who defused the situation. “Let’s just keep going,” he muttered, picking up the blaster and handing it to Banks. “What the fuck does it matter, anyway.”

And then there were sixteen.

“Slowly downward,” Sullivan muttered. “Slowly downward.”



<CENTER>* * * * *</CENTER>


“That smoke,” Sullivan said.

“It’s from the same fire we saw yesterday,” Isaac said. “On the hill.”

“The bodies.”

“Yeah,” Isaac said. “The bodies.”

Closer and closer the smoke came, rising over the shattered buildings and broken duracrete, over the miniature skyscrapers that the nanites had made out of the bigger skyscrapers. Until they were right on top of it, the smoke billowing and forming a dense fog around them.

He noticed that Kara was scratching a wound on her arm. “Are you alright?” He asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “It’s from last night. I’m okay.”

They stopped, looking at it from a distance. It was what they had created in a microcosmic way the night before; a great funeral pyre. A great mass of burning bodies, reaching as high as a second story building, covering almost an entire lot where a building had once been.

In Sullivan’s mind, he imagined that the machines had had their own private funeral for all of Utropollus. The nanites were the black clouds that always hung around funerals; the drudges were the pall bearers, and the great alien vehicles that the machines created the hearses. Dazed, he just stood staring at it.

Sullivan barely noticed Banks walking up to it. “This was it,” he said. “We’ve walked so long and so far I barely noticed where I was.” Banks was pale, sallow, still shaking hours after he had killed Karl.

“What?” Isaac asked, looking halfway concerned. Sullivan wondered why the commander had chosen now to show an interest in Banks’ mental health, until he realized that their leader was wary of anymore outbursts of violence.

“Isellington drive, West Isia district. This was my home. That was my apartment building. I guess,” he continued, turning and looking pathetically at Isaac and Sullivan, “that these are my friends and family.”

Numbly, the man staggered away.

“Let’s keep going.”

“No,” Isaac said. “There’s something strange about this. Something not right.”

“Yeah,” Sullivan agreed. He didn’t seem interested.

“They’re burning corpses. The corpses they need, the ones they use to fight us. I didn’t understand yesterday.” His eyes glazed over, and he looked sick. “I think I understand now.”

“Maybe they just have more than they can use. They have an entire planet’s worth,” Sullivan reminded him.

“No,” Isaac said, shaking his head vigorously and swallowing. “Look. Look at how the bodies are arranged.” He pointed at it, making angular hand gestures that looked all wrong on a man so obviously intelligent. “It’s a cross. The bodies are arranged in a cross.”

“I don’t get it.”

Isaac looked at him, that sick look still on his face. “Have you forgotten Mercism already?” He asked. “It’s a Mercist ritual. Animal sacrifices, arranged in the form of a cross, and burned. It’s a celebration. A celebration ritual, on the eve after a great military victory.”

Sullivan blinked. Banks just stood staring at the pile of bodies, as Kara looked concernedly at him. “Come on,” she said to them. “Let’s go.”

“They’re celebrating,” Isaac said, smiling deadly. “The machines are celebrating their victory.”

“Come on,” Kara said, finally breaking their collective trance. She scratched her arm and gently moved Banks forward, and the others followed.



<CENTER>* * * * *</CENTER>


The hours passed painfully slow. One of the women, cold and sickly for days, dropped dead as they walked. Then there were fifteen. Two women and thirteen men. Sullivan still didn’t know most of their names.

As they reached a district border crossing, Banks walked away from Kara for a moment and came up to Isaac and Sullivan. He never looked either one of them in the eye; he never looked where he was going. He just kept staring at the ground. “I’m sorry about Karl,” he said.

After a moment of silence, Isaac said, “It’s alright. Chalk it up to self-defense. Karl was a loose cannon, we all knew that.”

“No,” Banks said softly. “It’s not okay.”

Sullivan looked over at the short, scrawny man. “If Karl were here, I’m sure he would say that he was going to die anyway,” he pointed out, by way of consolation.”

“He would have said that,” Banks agreed. “Karl always told the truth. And I always lie. That’s why Karl always hated me. I sugar coat everything, I water the truth down, I don’t say what I’m thinking or mean what I say.” Banks looked up at the bleak, dusty sky, at the little rays of sun poking through, for a moment. “I didn’t mean to. I don’t mean to. In my old life – before all this happened, I mean – I used to do the same thing. I could never open up to anyone. Every woman I ever dated left me. My parents were distant; I didn’t have any close friends. I had no one. And now, Karl’s dead, for the same reason.”

Banks looked at the ground again. “It’s funny. In my old life, I was always a pessimist. I mean, I lied and distorted the truth, and I could never develop relationships, but I was never as optimistic as I was with all of you.” He laughed a little, short, dark laugh. “I mean, here, at least I had a few friends. I had people to talk to. Companions. That’s why I thought, just look on the bright side. I mean, I kept telling myself” he said, “you’re going to die, but at least you’re not alone, right?”

Banks chuckled in his sad little way again. “Anyway. I’m really sorry about Karl.”

He turned away, walking back to Kara.

It was a second more before Isaac and Sullivan heard him say it. “Kara, are you alright?”

Sullivan shut his eyes slowly, then turned around. When he opened them, he saw Kara, stopped twenty feet back, frantically clawing at her arm. It was raw, open and bleeding. Her skin had paled. “Kara?” Sullivan said. He was echoed by Banks and then Isaac, and then several others.

One of them – the only other remaining woman – approached her. “Are you alright?” She asked.

Kara gasped, doubled over, and made as if to scream, but no words came out. In a flash, she was up again, her arm lashing out at the throat of the other woman. She fell to the ground, a gash that did not look as if it could have been inflicted by human hands marring her neck. Blood gushed from the wound as the woman twitched.

Sullivan raised his blaster.

Minutes later, it was over, and Kara – or the nanite infested husk of what had once been Kara – was dead, dismembered and twitching on the ground from a flurry of blaster bolts and stun blasts. Banks ran to the corpse, the wretched and mutilated thing that bore little resemblance to the beautiful woman it had once comprised. He fell to his knees, his mouth moving as if to speak. No words came.

Everyone stared, and everyone shook. Eventually, Sullivan told them to move on. Thirteen men were left, including a cold, shaking Banks.

They walked, and they walked. Across vast stretches of cityscape, over the false hills of fallen skyscrapers, climbing buildings and charting their course to avoid the nanites, their presence unnoticed. Two more of the men died; malnutrition, exhaustion, and injury taking them to a place which might have been greatly preferable to the endless urban hell they now inhabited. When it came time to set down to camp, no one spoke. Isaac just dropped his pack, and everyone else followed suit.

They were on a plain, a flat of ground between cities. Once, there had been plants here. What became of them was a mystery; but now, it was nothing but a wasteland, a barren killing field of dust and the occasional ravaged speeder. Wordlessly, they set up the tents and started a fire. Automation kept them going now. Nothing motivated their movements but the silent, hopeless will to stay alive. The same will that existed in all living things – the one thing in such a vast universe that could be said to define all life.

Banks didn’t eat even the meager food he was offered. Sitting around the fire, he started to talk. “I don’t understand why this happened,” he said. “I don’t understand why the nanites came, or why we had to survive, or why I had to kill Karl. I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened. I didn’t even think about it. My hand just snapped up, and my finger pulled the trigger. It was just a reaction.”

Nobody said anything. Sullivan stared at Banks from behind his dead eyes. Sullivan couldn’t understand either. Why he of all people had been chosen to survive this horrible, pointless ordeal – he, whose life meant so little to anyone, himself included. Why this wretched story had dragged out so long, so far beyond reasonable limits.

That night, as the others slept, Banks went outside of his tent. He looked up at the night sky one last time. No, he didn’t understand any of it, at all. It just made him sick. And so, Banks Varrithane of 326 Isellington Drive, West Isia District, shot himself in the head. When they found his body in the morning, the buried it, next to a burned out speeder, in which a family of six had been ripped to pieces by the nanites three days before. Sullivan’s epitaph for Banks was, “Slowly downward, slowly downward.”

<center>* * * * *</center>

It was another week until they reached the Orion Bunker.

When they did, only Sullivan and Isaac remained. The others had all been killed, or had died of their own volition. Isaac had been taking doses of Sullivan’s libextoprophene for three days.

There was none left.

As Sullivan’s foot hit the last step in the nearly endless case spiraling down from a Utropollan government building, he wondered how much longer his last high would last, and whether it or his life would expire sooner.

Deeper and deeper the two sallow-skinned soldiers descended, their mindless quest almost at an end. The two had long since stopped speaking to one another. There was, really and truly, nothing left to say about anything. And if there had been, what would the point be?

They entered the innermost chamber of the bunker, and Sullivan wondered vaguely again why it all continued on, so far past the point where logic had dictated it should have stopped. Neither of them expected to survive, certainly not anymore. Neither of them thought that they would be rescued. If they were, the nanites would probably spread, and kill them anyway. The mission was hopeless, and pointless.

He thought about the little cells in his body, all of their little atoms pushing onward in the microcosmic ways, their futile efforts to stay alive driving him forward. Was that it? That was all he could feel like anymore. Just a bunch of little cells that happened to stick to one another. Fractured and lost in a place that had long ago lost all meaning.

A crash above them. The sound of an alarm as the bunker’s seal broke.

The sound of blasters readied, almost unconsciously. And of Isaac, frantically inputting the data to send one last, desperate message to the rest of the Utropollus system. A torch thrown, perhaps to no one. He finished, and prepared to send the data.

The first shot. Isaac turned from his work, firing frantically into the onrushing nanites, hopeless blasts into an endless wave against which he stood less than no chance. They arranged themselves, all the little pieces, like the cells in Sullivan’s body – and without effort, thrust themselves through Isaac, engulfing him and devouring him.

A final scream. To Sullivan, pleading with him to send the message.

As the nanites swarmed around him, he didn’t even bother to fire anymore. They had turned their attention to him now; they started in, coming together to rip him apart. He felt them gnaw into his skin, burrow into his eyes and up his nose and mouth, digging into his ears.

Far beyond the point of no return, he gathered whatever will had ever existed in him, and threw it, staggering to the console, and hitting the last few buttons. The message was sent.

Then, at last, Sullivan let go, embracing the oblivion that had been seeking for so long; the conclusion in a chain of events that had started when he was fifteen years old. And so it was, that Sullivan Bridgewater was dead.

*



Taken from Endgame...




”Ciscero, throughout the short history of the Empire, you will find that our system of government is based solely on four largely powerful, yet highly independent foundations.

The Empire’s checks and balances you might say but with less benevolence than those systems of the Republic.

The Military, The Force, The Economics Branch, and the Intelligence Office.


These four remain supreme among all functions and organizations within the Empire’s structure and bureaucracy.

It is when one becomes dominant do we see an extreme rise on a galactic scale.”


Ciscero’s mind was following the General but where he could not discern.


“The Empire cannot really transcend the effects of its devastating rebellion until one foundation rises above the rest.”

Ciscero got it immediately. “Which is what was being determined, what has been happening behind the scenes these past few years..”

“Exactly. By the time my division and I made our way to Bastion, Intelligence was supreme. The ‘death’ of Grand Admiral Thrawn left a vacuum that Isard filled.”

The Agent’s eyes narrowed, “But the Military Command was also powerful. Admiral Hyfe, Grand Admiral Zell, Moff Handler, the Regent.. these people were taking the Empire forward!” Ciscero disagreed with Kaine. “You weren’t here in the early days. The Rebellion had won! The Empire was smashed and it was trying to rally. Everything! Everything was lost except our last fall-back positions. Everything except the Bastion of our hopes.”

“Poetic, Ciscero.” Kaine smiled slightly, “But you miss the point. The Military had failed. The grand plan of the Regent, the Restoration of Order upon the galaxy failed! But, was it the fault of the Military?”

Kaine leveled his dark eyes at Ciscero, “No. It wasn’t!”

I’ve been to the archives.. I’ve seen the reports of our officers and our corps and I can assure you that the TNO Military Command was second to none!”

“And you feel Intel’s hand in it?” the agent asked quietly.

“Of those you mentioned, Darth Exceron, Grand Admiral Zell, Moff Handler… only Hyfe remains. Only Hyfe holds a position of strength.”

“Isolate, neutralize and subtract..” Ciscero’s Intel training voiced up.

“..at least subtracted from the scene if not removed totally. Isard was Queen… but then something happened that she did not expect… another foundation was tapped… one that threatened her hold on the Imperium.”

“Which was?”

“Daemon Hyfe.”

Another shuttle, remarkably like that Samantha Koortyn – in the employ of General Grevious – had piloted between the worlds of Bakura and Utropollus only a short eternity before, slowly brought itself to rest on the now barren surface of that dead world.
These people had been there before. If not in presence, in spirit.

A different set of eyes, the last pair of living eyes on Utropollus, now watched them descend. They, too, had watched those first shuttles. Now they employed the passage of these little shuttles, not the now-dead administrators of the Plato District Minimum Security Extended Residence Prison Hospital.

The difference in the planet’s appearance was observed with only cursory interest by the inhabitants of the craft. Either way, it would have been neither here nor there to them; they were simple businessmen, after all.

Their business, of course, was death. So it was little surprise they regarded the destruction of Utropollus with such nonchalance.

As if a planet of corpses were not enough, they now brought one more, encased in carbonite as they descended from their shuttle’s ramp.

The pair of eyes, the eyes of Venn Stoudius Macbeth, gazed out through the swarms of nanites that surrounded him. The final piece of his puzzle had arrived. The machines he controlled had spread beyond just this barren world; the Utropollus system would soon be his. And this piece would unlock the cage surrounding that system, unleashing his menace on the entire galaxy. A gift of utter darkness.

Yes, Macbeth thought, a gift. That is what his minions were. A gift, to cleanse the galaxy of its unending, shameful injustices.

The corpse in its carbonite was, too, a gift. He caught a glimpse of it, and it delighted him. It was a gift that a certain young Governor of the Emperor’s New Order would be sure to enjoy.

That thought pleased him immensely, and the swarms of nanites all around him shook in reply. So strong was his delight that all over the planet of Utropollus Major, at that moment, all of his forces – the dread creatures he had created to cleanse the galaxy – vibrated in one manner of another.

Outlined in the dull grey of carbonite, was the distinctive shape of an Imperial Royal Guard’s helmet.